Constellation Inspiration Stereo 1.0 Review: A Look at a True Modern “Unicorn” Amplifier

One of the most common requests we receive at The Music Room is for a “wishlist” or notification system that alerts customers to a specific piece of gear coming through our pipeline.

Whether it’s the matching mono amp to pair with a vintage single, or the tonearm that never pops up on the used market, there are plenty of those “unicorn” pieces out there that prove harder than some to locate second hand.

Think of it. Instead of spending months scouring the results of daily “Google alerts” and visiting a checklist of all the typical places where HiFi gear is found, a customer could get a quick notification from our system, which would deliver the same, if not better results, but with no work or hassle on the part of the customer.

The actual execution of this kind of thing is very complex, but the good news is that we are working on it, and we think we can pull it off. Some of our most talented staff are currently laying the groundwork for this function, because we hear you. And we’ve got more tricks up our sleeve than just that — big things are brewing here at The Music Room.

In the meantime, the best way we’ve got to let the audioverse know about a great piece of gear available is either through our Fresh Arrivals page, this blog, or the weekly Friday Five emails we send out.

What, pray tell, does this have to do with the lovely Constellation Inspiration Stereo 1.0 you see above? Well, I think this thing is pretty unicorn-y. In my years here, testing thousands of pieces of HiFi equipment from all over the world, I’ve developed some favorites. And this is undoubtedly one of them, though my interest and experience with Constellation’s products go deeper than that.

Many moons ago, one way or another, I managed to land a reference amplifier for my home system: a Constellation Centaur stereo, which was a gift, if you can believe it. Over the years of ownership since then, I have grown this easy, enduring love for Constellation Audio. They’re one of those companies that move slowly and only produce excellence. You might see a model exist in their lineup for years beyond what the typical audio product timeline would be elsewhere.

Part of this is because the products are such pinnacles of achievement. They’re deserving of a lengthy stage appearance thanks to the noteworthy R&D poured into each design. The Centaur, for example, was created by a veritable dream team of HiFi audio designers; a who’s who list of guys like John Curl, Bascom King, and James Bongiorno. HiFi All-Stars.

Bascom was the lead engineer for the Centaur project, and that’s noteworthy because after the Centaur, it was his specific “N-channel-only” MOSFET approach that Constellation began to adopt across all of its products. You see, most powerful A/B amplifiers on the market today use both N- and P-channel MOSFETs as their output devices, and they work in a complementary fashion. But, the P-channel power MOSFETs available to manufacturers today are actually a bit nonlinear in their output in the midbass area (~150Hz - 350Hz), and this is commonly known.

What isn’t commonly known is how to design a circuit that allows half of the N-channel chips to act like P-channels, offering better performance in a vital region of the audio spectrum. This, Bascom brought to the mix at Constellation, as well as PS Audio — his BHK Signature amplifiers do the same thing.

What a beautiful piece of machinery this Inspiration 1.0 is. The Inspiration series comes to life the instant you turn it on, and continues to seduce as the amp warms up further. But… leave this lovely amp on for a couple of days and then have a listen. Trust me, as a Constellation owner, that is when the real magic starts to happen.

Don’t sleep on this deal!

Check out the Constellation Inspiration Stereo 1.0